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Morgan County law enforcement struggling with marijuana-impaired drivers

By Stephanie Alderton

Times Staff Writer

Posted:
04/05/2016 12:48:57 PM MDT

Cars park outside Nature's Herbs and Wellness Center II, owned by John and Alicia Rotherham, one of two marijuana retail stores and medical dispensaries in Log Lane Village. A sign on the door reads, "Amendment 64 does not allow for public consumption" — but that hasn't stopped many people in Morgan County from smoking and driving, according to Sheriff Jim Crone. (Stephanie Alderton / Fort Morgan Times)

Cars park outside Green Stop, a marijuana retail store in Log Lane Village. The owners, Zach and Summer Larsen, recently opened a recreational-only wing of the shop, which also has a medical dispensary. (Stephanie Alderton / Fort Morgan Times)

As Colorado enters its third year of legal recreational marijuana, law enforcement officers in Morgan County are dealing with a new breed of impaired drivers.

Although Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana, doesn't allow smoking pot and driving, the number of citations for stoned drivers has been increasing ever since it passed, according to the Colorado State Patrol.

In Morgan County, overall DUI offenses have gone down over the last decade or so, but marijuana-related DUIs are becoming more common. That reflects a statewide trend, as the Colorado State Patrol reported an increase in the average number of marijuana DUI citations from 12.2 percent in 2014 to 14.6 percent in 2015.

"I'm not sure if we're truly seeing more marijuana and more drug-related DUIs — it's probably a combination of more of them and a combination of us getting better at detecting impairment other than alcohol," Morgan County Sheriff Jim Crone said.

Under current state laws, people who drive stoned get the same penalties as those who drive while drunk. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, alcohol and marijuana have similar effects on drivers, such as impaired judgment and slowed reaction times. But detecting and prosecuting drivers under the influence of marijuana and other drugs can be more complicated than it is in the case of alcohol.

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Crone said a person is legally considered "under the influence" of marijuana if his or her blood contains 75 nanograms of THC — the drug's intoxicating chemical contained in the plant. But blood tests aren't always reliable, since THC can stay in the bloodstream for days or even weeks after consumption. Crone said his deputies mostly rely on observations of a driver's behavior to determine whether they're impaired, so they've had to undergo more training to recognize the effects of different substances.

The good news is, there aren't too many impaired drivers of any kind on Morgan County roads, especially compared to the early 2000s, which Crone called the "peak period" of DUIs in the area. The sheriff's office only made 186 DUI arrests from 2011 to 2015. They haven't yet begun tracking marijuana-related offenses separately from alcohol-related ones, though Crone plans to begin doing that within the next month.

But ever since Amendment 64 went into effect in 2013, Morgan County, like other places in Colorado, has seen more people driving while high. And Crone said those people tend to be more intoxicated than the marijuana users he saw before the amendment.

"I didn't think it was going to change a whole lot, because of the number of people that were smoking weed already," he said. "But the weed that's coming out of Mexico...is nothing compared to the stuff that we're dealing with now, that's being grown and sold in the dispensaries here."

He said Colorado-grown marijuana, especially what's found in the edible concentrates that many dispensaries sell, intoxicates consumers faster and impairs their driving ability more than the illegal product deputies once were used to seeing.

Law enforcement officials also see a difference in drivers' attitudes since legalization. The Colorado Department of Transportation instituted the "Drive High, Get a DUI" public information campaign in response to survey results that showed only 51 percent of marijuana users believed they would get pulled over if they drove high.

"Our research indicates that unfortunately a lot of marijuana users are driving high and many believe they will not get a DUI for doing so," Amy Ford, a CDOT spokesperson, said in a February press release. "Our goal is to keep our roadways safe from impaired drivers, which will take a combination of strong enforcement and public education targeted at marijuana users."

Crone hopes that better training for patrol officers, more thorough tracking of marijuana arrests and more accurate tests for impairment will help with the "strong enforcement" side of that. He believes that with enough experimentation, law enforcement agencies like his will eventually find a way to test drivers for THC just like they do with alcohol.

"It's going to take a while to get us to a good standard where it's like, 'OK, we've got this figured out,'" he said.

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